I' ve cut my way through life on camelback,
Halting only punctually by the track;

Yes, “punctually” indeed, to sleep and feed
On what was placed with care on my steed:

Sun-dried Thoughts & Language for me; the fruit,
For those I met on the opposite route.

© Lazhar Bouazzi, Carthage, TUN, July 1, 2016

Writing is
the frozen music
of an ellipsis,
the silent song
of a lonesome poet
who sings in the dark
among howling winds
crossing swords
in the white shades
of unseen things -
a winter on the Pole
on whose  obverse side
there's Rio,
and the Sun,
and the Samba
and the revenge
of the color.


© Lazhar Bouazzi, May 31, 2016; revised, August 5, 2016

“A little bit of rain on my words,”
Cried the poet.
But the rain would not acquiesce
For she dreaded a languagekiss.

© LazharBouazzi

The yellow rays of the sun fell on the Bower
Like a golden rain
And a bee kissed with the tongue a crimson flower
Like a song refrain
As a silky butterfly sweet as a shower
Poked fun at my pain.
© LazharBouazzi, December 29, 2017

The moon rose up
Late
Tonight.

Her face
A replica
Of Africa.

(C)LazharBouazzi, Tunisia

A cabin that had once been white
Stood, peeled, on the shore of Carthage.
Looking like a tipsy scarfaced knight-
Eyes shut to Dionysian carnage.
A pack of lost dogs roamed around it,
Their pangs of want they sought to manage.

The lone cabin stood on the wrinkled sand,
Like a young tree on Shott el Jerid's* white pale
Whom the white monster forced to speak with the hand:
“Basta, no stubborn resistance from me will avail.”

The fuming sun displayed his festival of fear
Over dogs who could handle their thirst no more;
While the salt has now made its white task clear:
Gnawing the sapling and gnawing evermore
Till the sole mark on the Shott shall disappear.

Now the poet who has only half-chosen the vision
Half not knowing what to do, tried to listen
To the trickle of his one obstinate cheer
Oozing through the new orange laptop,
He had purchased from a japanese peer.

(c) LazharBouazzi

A dark rim hugs an acre of
A zinc ocean - no fish, no birds,
Save a pure body, no soul,
No words, fluttering on a bro-
ken sea, and grimacing
From time to time, from
Wave to wave, in lieu
Of lifting an imploring hand.
©LazharBouazzi (2017)

I
He was intoxicated
by the scent of coffee
dancing in the morning
to his mother’s humming.
II
Then a blacksmith - his father -
taught him how to hammer
form out of chaos
in the muddle of force
and a sweaty anvil.
III
Now if he wished to see
the sunness of the sun
and the greenness of the tree
he would summon the image
of Fatma - an Arab maiden
who was once Berber,
to come write on his face
with her soothing finger:
“Salam, my anguished lover.”
IV
When green-eyed Fatma comes
the wreaths of coffee
Would come with her,
writing in the air;
and all the songs of history
would come marching too,
in battle array,
like an army dressed
in civilian clothing
for a dance in Rio.
V
Fatma’s hair –
a still cascade
of light goldness,
a tide of watery fire,
a flight motionless
of a millon birds who
sing in tongues
and laugh
to the stone unlettered
of his fidgety cenotaph.

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN

A rugged sidewalk cried hard by the way-side;
Its cracks could not hold their grey tears anymore.

A puny man pushed a red cart in the tide
Down a darkling, narrow street in Salammbô.

He gasped behind his overladen chariot,
As he hurried toward the “Sunday Market.”

His merkabah bore many a lost gadget
Which he had found buried in the quicksand;

Among them a fountain pen and a helmet,
A pair of eyeglasses, and a trumpet.

I wondered, gazing at the small man’s wet face:
Will this worn-out scene ever reach the market?

© LazharBouazzi

I
A hungry black-backed gull,
ready for the ****,
circled over a school of sardines.
II
Beyond the black-backed gull,
an old boat stood still,
waiting for a place in the harbor.
III
At the top of the hill –
in the back -
rose a lighthouse and a mosque
Who,
through their small windows
Gazed at the aquatic scene.

(c) LazharBouazzi

The moon says the final word tonight -
Casual-recherché and light.

She, in the absence of the sun,
Leafs through the pages of the night

And shoots a side-look at the pond,
As her desire stretches far
Beyond his specular contour.

(c) LazharBouazzi

When I die – if I ever do -
Bury me in a garden, if you
Have guts;
Or in a vineyard, with a trellis,
For I will not drink from torrents
And mythic Greek rivers.
© LazharBouazzi, 24 June, 2018

Simplicity
Is the
Act of giving shape
To chaos -
An affair of alchemy,
Like turning sweat
Into drops of
Silver.

(c) LazharBouazzi

It rained last night while he slept
in the chair, waiting for her -
I mean for the rain to bedeck
the olive tree with her silver perls
and cause a stir
in his reason and imagination -
a spur.
But the rain came while he slept.

She came and came and came -
for nothing.

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, May 17; revised on July 30, 2016

On a golden bedding
Spread for you by June -
Silken, fresh tedding
Beneath a sluggish noon .
Ah! Your fragrant silhouette
In a blink of my eye!

But we are in the winter
Now,
The time to surrender
To the stories that unfold
Of the children and the old
Adding cold to cold
Around a hearth of clay

As I look through the window pane
I glimpse a scarlet tourist train
Across the scintillating snow
Coloring the leaden no-show
That shut him out from the rainbow.

Oh! Your fragrant silhouette
On a summer wheat show!


© LazharBouazzi, January 21, 2018

The sun loomed young through the ribs of the Punic Port
Bringing back his turquoise splendor to the Med-Sea;
And Seagull, who in his morning flight did escort
The golden loaf of bread fishermen longed to see,
Soared higher and higher over the glazing port,
Preparing for the long voyage when the time be.

Expectant and white was the Carthaginian knight,
Oblivious of the blue peril; no long flight
Would scare him, no azure thirst would he have to fight.
Only the phantasm of an alien skylark,
who would despoil the timer of the golden sun &
peck out her "off" button  with his accent mark -
Would make him soar & sing in his vision of bravery.

(c)LazharBouazzi

Of this verse
The core, the middle,
Is marked on its palm.
No riddle
To be guessed in a lyric
So brittle,
Whose task
Is  to hold in place
The fissured parts
Of a gypsy's fiddle.

LazharBouazzi, April 4, 2017

I
He was intoxicated
by the scent of the coffee
dancing in the morning
to his mother’s humming.
II
Then a blacksmith - his father -
taught him how to hammer
form out of chaos
in the muddle of force
and a sweaty anvil.
III
Now if he wished to see
the sunness of Sun
and the greenness of Tree
he would summon the specter
of an Arab maiden - Fatma -
who was once Berber
to come write on his face
with her soothing finger:
“Salam, my anguished lover.”
IV
When green-eyed Fatma comes
the wreaths of coffee
Would come with her
writing in the air;
and all the songs of history
would come marching too,
in battle array,
like an army dressed
in civilian clothes
for a dance in Rio.
V
Fatma’s hair –
a still cascade
of thin goldeness,
a tide of watery fire,
a flight motionless  
of a million birds who
speak in tongues
and laugh
to the stone unlettered
of his fidgety cenotaph .

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, August 27, 2016

You are the eye
Under whose lids
I bask without
having to ask
“Why should I die?”

And your thighs, ah!
When my eyes
Conjure up your thighs
I become certain
Of one thing:
That the dead will rise again.
LazharBouazzi, May 13, 2018

A cabin that had once been white
Stood, peeled, on the shore of Carthage.
It looked like a drunken scarfaced knight -
Eyes shut to Dionysian carnage.
A pack of lost dogs roamed around it,
Their pangs of want they sought to manage.

The lone cabin stood on the wrinkled sand
Like a young tree on Shott el Jerid's* white pale
Whom the white monster forced to speak with the hand:
“Basta, no stubborn resistance from me will avail.”

The fuming sun displayed his festival of fear
Over dogs who could handle their thirst no more;
While the salt has now made its white task clear:
Gnawing the sapling and gnawing evermore
Until the only mark on the Shott will disappear.

And the poet who has only half-chosen the vision
Half not knowing what to do, tried to listen
To the trickle of his obstinate, patient cheer
Oozing through the new orange laptop,
He had purchased from a Chinese peer.

(c) LazharBouazzi, August 10, 2016.

I do not turn to poetry
to rescue me from memory;
on the contrary,
I conjure the red humming bee
on the bluegreen rosemary tree,
I teased when I was a carefree
boy, in the backyard,
only to roll with the punches -
aye, with the punches - of synecdoche.

© LazharBouazzi, May 2016

Half-buried in the sand, lay some rocks in the sun ,
Whom nature had mocked in the shape of sea dogs;
Their wrinkled coats say they’d been too long in the sea.

Next to them, as sunrays kissed a dormant crab,
Traces of some bare feet started to crumble
Under the silent, liquid weight of a tide within.

Now let the amphibious Historians rejoice
In interpretation thereof a dark green hog
Comes forth from the mountain to the shore - to sun
Himself and send the frightened rocks back to the ocean.

(c) LazharBouazzi (December 7, 2017)

The first thing I saw early this morning
when I pulled back the blue-sky curtains
was a hectic white and orange butterfly
waving in the fair sun of my garden -
between the enclosed well and the laurel tree.

On the scarlet, bright sidewalk,
two damsels strutted together;
a turquoise skirt wore the one,
a chocolate T-shirt the other.
Jubilant they were together,
for the cadence of their laughter
waved in the air as Tunisian silk.

See?
No harvest did my screen display today -
no mountain range loomed far in the distance -
all that was unraveled were a laughing sidewalk,
and a quivering sun in a small garden.

(c) LazharBouazzi, April 21, 2016; revised, August 17, 2016

I saw two butterflies in the alley,
'Twixt the new well and the orange tree;
With the shade of the tree they seemed to dally
To tease the sun who, without them cannot be.
I overheard two blackbirds when I looked up:
“Why can’t we tease the shade like the butterflies?”
Said the maid-bird, pretending an orange to sup.

And before she could even realize,
The blackbird spread his long wing over her thighs.
In the throbbing blue flakes of the sky she cries
& she cries & she moans & she moans & she cries -
Unlike a Buddhist.

The rain falling now
In Carthage -
A nectar
Of rainness -
Is like the grains
Of couscous
Made the day of
Celebration.

In Carthage today
The scent of rain
Is like the sound of
Pain
Memory had lost
To imagination.

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, june 30, 2017

A crimson boat waives
the flow of the waves
as a blonde damsel craves
an infernal sun.

Next to the maiden
and the dandy-fella,
blossoms a vermillion
umbrella
whose washed out shadow
played the shady cellar
for two green apples
and one apricot
the blonde damsel hungrily
had bought
to quench her own fiery
want
of the lustful monster.

Closing her ice-blue eyes,
the fair woman,
her sinful inspiration
did she summon
to come carve
on her body so sullen
a scarlet picture
of the new Benzart bridge.

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUNISA


*"Benzart" is the Tunisian name for “Biserta” or “Bizerte”- a beach town on the northern coast of Tunisia.

A torrid rumbling in my head
Chants for the making of a poem,
But no words in my head respond
To the hungry, chanting plea.

A brass rim hugs an acre of
A zinc ocean, no fish no birds,
Save an empty body, no soul no words,
Fluttering on a broken sea.

And lifting from time to time,
From wave to wave, a valedictory
Pallid hand in lieu of a grimace.


©LazharBouazzi (August 11, 2017)

No matter how often a road is traveled by,
It never tells the same story twice.
(c) LazharBouazzi

i
What is it exactly that we celebrate today?
An oncoming rain or the passage of Time?
ii
Under his feet, the water in the sea
Burned with a cold, liquid flame,
Cold & silver - a transmutation of fire
Fuelled by his mother's tear
In which he sailed to Sicily.
iii
Bayreuth looked like a frozen Sahara,
With the local colors, and a pale-blue train
He had taken in Rome, at the "Stazioni Termini."
vi
What is it exactly that he should celebrate today?
The Passing of August, or the Advent of the Frost
In the Season of Eternity?

© LazharBouazzi, August 30, 2017

"Arab Chickens"* are like
Imaginations:
Indefatigable measurers
Of length and breadth
Where color, choice,
And depth
Are manifestations of the surface.

©LazharBouazzi, Carthage, March1, 2017. Re-revised, March 3, 2017

The lane is light-less tonight;
But I’m not unduly perturbed,
For there is still enough sight
In my fancy not to be curbed
By a solitary lamp
Who was forced into silence.

© LazharBouazzi, October 16, 2016

The moon, a hollow
Saint Jacques shell,
whose kernel
lovers
and language figures
had wasted through the flow
of time,
came
to this eerie pond
a dry vagabond -
now a dweller
of the surface deep.

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, September 3, 2016

"Stung
like a bumblebee,
Danced
like a butterfly."
Once or twice
he was on his knee,
But never lost
the “tiger’s eye.”

Au revoir,
inerrant Punch Press!
Yes,
adiós,
Black Orpheus!
Adiós,  
adiós!

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, June 6, 2016

Is only a name.
But naming is
Like timing,
Spacing,
Teasing
Loving -
A carving
In chaos.

© LazharBouazzi, February 14, 2017

Shooting a battle cry
Athwart the leaden sky,
A gull hurried to his task
Before the sky wears his mask.

Nobody knew what his task was
Except that his time drew to a pause
And that he had to hurry because
From the open he had to retreat.

The bird knew this but he was wayward
Swimming in the airy wave, beak forward,
Skating, flying, but always eastward,
Heedless of the dark, like a poet.

(c) LazharBouazzi

Let me offer you a blue and scarlet balance
To wish you on these jocund days of Christmas
What mortals tire not of wishing to themselves:
A fragrant, eternal equilibrium.
© LazharBouazzi (December 19, 2017)

I do miss
Your golden dunes,

But don’t take it amiss
If today
I ask you to turn
On the other side

So that I can see
Your hot, burning
Soul
I crave to kiss
With my fountain pen.

© LazharBouazzi, February 2, 2017

An oblique path cutting in two a blue hill  
Bathed in a cobalt ocean of morning glories.
On the blue hill there were also a red mill,
Crickets, ants, bees, and many-hued damselflies.

A haven was the fresh upside-down coquille
For long stories untold and movements still
Of difference and dragonflies of fluttering
Over a bluesky ground of mute uttering.

On a dry log pitched not too far from the mill,
Rose an artless sign in the sound unseen of the hill;
Each of whose letters was written in blueberry -
Surely placed there by a traveler in a hurry:
“No matter how often a road is traveled by,
It never tells twice the selfsame story.”

(c) LazharBouazzi, Tunisia

Look at the dormant summer noon
Drowsing by the pregnant tree
And lulled to his vision of the moon
By a wandering honey bee
Whose songs are so sweet and subdued
Like a score of apples waiting  in
A cluster
Not knowing when they will be plucked
So they, too, hung on a sleeper’s specter.

© LazharBouazzi, TUNISIA

Through the moiré windowpane -
By my leaden writing desk -
I saw a host of dark clouds
Hastening to their somber task
Like a herd of frightened sheep
Shrouded ‘neath the callous mask
Of the night - on the way home.

Through the moiré window pane
A question stood in my way again:
What is a cloud that leaves shut
The flask* of an announced rain?

© LazharBouazzi, 30/12/2016

I saw two butterflies in the alley,
between the new well and the orange tree;
With the shade of the tree they seemed to dally
to tease the sun who, without them cannot be.
I overheard two blackbirds when I looked up:
“Why can’t we tease the shade like the butterflies?”
Said the maid-bird, pretending an orange to sup.

And before she could even realize,
The darkbird spread his long wing over her thighs.
In the throbbing blue flakes of the sky she cries
& she cries & moans & she moans & she cries
unlike a Buddhist.


© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, August 25, 2016

He dreamed of the silver rays of rain
Kissing the pallid thirst of the desert

He dreamed of a hectic, blue wind
Fluttering - with no sails on orange boats

He dreamed of the stars shining alone
Out of the somber dome of night

He dreamed of his imagination
Re-inventing a color to the sea

©LazharBouazzi (December 2, 2017)

An ashy weeping willow,  
Lay in my wobbling garden.
Like a cosmic silver pigeon.

Up: the still, leaden flow
Sailed - a cold, prowling woe,
Charging to pounce on Carthage.

In: the wreaths of smoke letters
Gather as leaden fetters,
Then dart like Irish setters,
Released after a game.

LazharBouazzi, January 6, 2017

Hell hurled and hissed
And clenched her fist
Around the city.

O wind
Dig a pool in my wrist
And in the womb of August
Mark an ode to thunder.

© LazharBouazzi, September 17, 2017

Being a novice
in poetry
he knows how to color
an old tree,
a sky in the winter,
an ocean,
or even a dancing
emotion.

But pleading
with the wind
to come
and sing
the sparkling
thunder
that tears the ,
weeping dome
asunder,
is a different tale –
altogether.

(c) LazharBouazzi, May 7, 2016

'Twixt the sandy dunes of words
And the shimmering darkness
Of ink
I riot with my forked tongue
As a snake would do among
The unlettered stones of a
Sunny graveyard.

© LazharBouazzi

What is it that he celebrates today,
The oncoming of the frost or the passing of time?

Beneath his feet the water
Scintillates with a flame liquid -
Silver -
A transmutation of fire
Fuelled by the tears of his mother,
In whose waves he sailed to Sicily.

Bayreuth, Germany, looked like a frozen Sahara
With the local colors, and a pale-blue train
He had taken in Rome, at the "Stazione Termini.”

She: her body was carved in Napoli
He: his hair was planted in Carthage,
But both sought another knowledge
In Tübingen or perhaps in Konstanz.

She said, “I would sail from here to there,
Like you did from where you were,

But I would lose the rattle of your absence,
And that would be what makes all the difference”!
© LazharBouazzi, January 27, 2018

Your golden dunes
I miss.
But please don’t take it
amiss
If today
I ask you to turn
On the other side
So that I can see
Your hot, burning
Soul I crave
to kiss -
With my fountain pen.
© LazharBouazzi